How Rice Built the World As We Know It. No, America Doesn't Grow As Much of the World's Corn as You Think It Does. This Is How Much Food It Would Take to End World Hunger. A Chart That Shows Where Every Country in the World Gets Its Food. This Failed Experiment Is Still Causing Farmers Trouble Almost a Decade Later. Suitable Days for Plant Growth Disappear under Projected Climate Change: Potential Human and Biotic Vulnerability. Abstract Ongoing climate change can alter conditions for plant growth, in turn affecting ecological and social systems.
While there have been considerable advances in understanding the physical aspects of climate change, comprehensive analyses integrating climate, biological, and social sciences are less common. Here we use climate projections under alternative mitigation scenarios to show how changes in environmental variables that limit plant growth could impact ecosystems and people.
We show that although the global mean number of days above freezing will increase by up to 7% by 2100 under “business as usual” (representative concentration pathway [RCP] 8.5), suitable growing days will actually decrease globally by up to 11% when other climatic variables that limit plant growth are considered (i.e., temperature, water availability, and solar radiation). Author Summary Academic Editor: Georgina M. Mace, University College London, UNITED KINGDOM Introduction Results and Discussion Fig 1. This Chart Shows Why We’re Not Nearly Worried Enough About the Drought. Suitable Days for Plant Growth Disappear under Projected Climate Change: Potential Human and Biotic Vulnerability. Americans Agree: Everyone But Them Is Wasting Their Food. Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts. Here's What Countries Whose Hunger Problem Is Improving Do Differently. Lab grown meat thirty thousand times cheaper than 18 months ago.
LED Lighting From GE Helps Farming Go High-Tech In... Humans have spent the last 10,000 years mastering agriculture. But a freak summer storm or bad drought can still mar many a well-planted harvest. Not anymore, says Japanese plant physiologist Shigeharu Shimamura, who has moved industrial-scale farming indoors thanks to special LED lights developed by GE. Working in Miyagi Prefecture in eastern Japan, which was badly hit by powerful earthquake and tsunamis in 2011, Shimamura turned a former Sony Corporation semiconductor factory into the world’s largest indoor farm illuminated by LEDs.
The special LED fixtures were developed by GE Lighting and emit light at wavelengths optimal for plant growth. The farm is nearly half the size of a football field (25,000 square feet). It opened on July and it is already producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. The farm uses 17,500 LED lights spread over 18 cultivation racks reaching 15 levels high. The LED fixtures are a key part of the farm’s magic. The farm is producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. Biggest indoor farm is 100 times more productive than conventional agriculture. Following the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that plunged the whole country of Japan in turmoil, a local food shortage ensued.
An inspired entrepreneur, Shigeharu Shimamura, took an old semiconductor factory that was abandoned following the disaster and turned it into the largest indoor farm in the world. Using state of the art growing technology, his company manages to make some 10,000 heads of lettuce per day out of the 25,000 square feet facility. This makes it 100 times more productive per square foot than traditional agriculture, all with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields.
The massive productivity is mainly achieved by manipulating the plants’ day and night cycles. Using custom developed LEDs from General Electric, scientists have shortened the day/night cycle for the lettuce, to such an extent that they grow two and a half times faster. Productivity is not only increased by producing more, but by wasting less. Crickets Alone Will Not Save You, Futurist Foodies. Food Loss and Food Waste | FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In 2011, FAO presented the estimate that around 1/3 of the world’s food was lost or wasted every year.
Since then, much has changed in the global perception of the problem. Food loss and waste has indeed become an issue of great public concern. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development reflects the increased global awareness of the problem. Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls for halving per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels by 2030, as well as reducing food losses along the production and supply chains. To provide more clarity on the subject and to measure progress towards SDG Target 12.3, FAO’s 2011 estimate is in the process of being replaced by two separate indices: the Food Loss Index (FLI) and the Food Waste Index (FWI).
The FLI, prepared by FAO, provides new loss estimates from post-harvest up to, but not including, the retail stage. Everyone has a part to play in reducing food loss and waste. Share this page. This Chart Reveals Where All The World's Food Goes. Diamond catalyst shows promise in breaching age-old barrier (June 30, 2013) In the world, there are a lot of small molecules people would like to get rid of, or at least convert to something useful, according to UW-Madison chemist Robert J.
Hamers. Robert J. Hamers Think carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for far-reaching effects on global climate. Nitrogen is another ubiquitous small-molecule gas that can be transformed into the valuable agricultural fertilizer ammonia. “The current process for reducing nitrogen to ammonia is done under extreme conditions,” explains Hamers, a professor of chemistry. Breaching that barrier more efficiently and reducing the huge amounts of energy used to convert nitrogen to ammonia — by some estimates, 2 percent of the world’s electrical output — has been a grail for the agricultural chemical industry.
Like many chemical reactions, reducing nitrogen to ammonia is a product of catalysis, where the catalytic agent used in the traditional energy-intensive reduction process is iron. Climate Change Could Cut Global Food Output 18% By 2050. Curiously, we've already reached an odd sort of tipping point. Southern California simply grows too much food to be supported by its resources (read that "water. ") As the droughts continue, less and less of the US food supply will be able to be grown in the Southwest. What will happen? That's the 24 billion dollar question. For one thing, our food supply will probably change drastically in type. But other changes may compensate. Or take the Southwestern Interior of British Columbia, Canada.
Then there's the far north, which used to have permafrost that made farming impossible. The thing is, our world won't be destroyed. Famine and Water Riots Are Coming, Warns New Intergovernmental Report. Americans waste over 140 trillion calories of food a year. I've thought about this in the past. A lot of what's thrown away is actually veggies and fruits (rather than meat, which we can freeze easily), because they rot in the fridge of that 20% of consumers, as mentioned in the article.
The problem is not humans being wasteful, but the way these veggies and fruits are sold. For example, if I want 2 leaves of kale for a stew, I have to buy a bunch. If I want 5 tangerines, I have to buy 30. Vegetables were a lot of it, but the top category of wasted food was actually meat/fish, which made up 30% of the total. For meat and fish, my idea was to always sell them at 80 to 100 gr per package (depending on the cut), which is a reasonable portion size for protein. The U.S. throws 2 billions pounds of fish back in the ocean a year. So it's the capture technique that the specific fisheries use that cause the problems?
Booooo California! Come on, you're better than that. Not really. Most fishing techniques aren't very selective. One of the reasons the NE has some of the lower numbers is that in 2012 they completely re-hauled the groundfish program and now everyone within a "sector" can trade right to land specific amounts of fish. Interesting — any idea why trading caught on in the NE and not other areas? It does exist in some other areas, like Alaskan groundfish - you can see that has one of the lower rates. There's a number of reasons similar cap n'trade (we call 'em catch shares) programs are not ubiquitous, including the fact that it depends on the ecology of the area and what is caught. Add the fact that we only started moving towards this approach nationally when Lubchenco was in charge (2009-2013, thanks Obama!). There's been continued resistance. The International Rice Genebank.
Each type of rice in the International Rice Genebank is stored in both the base (-20 degrees Celsius, long-term storage) and active ( 2-4 degrees Celsius, for distribution) collections. The viability of rice seed can decline very quickly (over months) when stored in conditions more typical of how a rice farmer in Asia may store seed, depending on climate and initial seed quality. For example, if the initial viability of a rice seed sample is 95% (that is, 95% of the seed will germinate) and it is kept at a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius, with 70% relative humidity, and with a seed moisture content of 13.5% (fresh weight basis), seed viablity would be 1% after just 5 months.
In the International Rice Genebank, rice seeds have the potential to remain viable for many decades. Viability testing of all samples is carried out every 5 years for seed stored in the active collection, or every 10 years for seed stored in the base collection. Our mission. IRRI aims to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and ensure environmental sustainability of rice farming.
We do these through collaborative research, partnerships, and the strengthening of the national agricultural research and extension systems, or NARES, of the countries we work in. Our goals IRRI's goals contribute to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and ensure environmental sustainability. They are also aligned with the objectives of the Global Rice Science Partnership (the CGIAR Research Program on Rice) that help deliver internationally coordinated research effectively and efficiently with our partners. Ensure that rice production is stable and sustainable, does minimal harm to the environment, and can cope with climate change.
Improve the nutrition and health of poor rice consumers and rice farmers. International Network for Genetic Evaluation of Rice. Suspicious Virus Makes Rare Cross-Kingdom Leap From Plants to Honeybees | The Artful Amoeba. Tobacco ringspot virus extracted from honeybees. Adapted from Fig. 2 from Li et al., 2014. Click image for source. When HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans sometime in the early 1900s, it crossed a gulf spanning several million years of evolution. But tobacco ringspot virus, scientists announced last week, has made a jump that defies credulity. It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide. And this is likely bad news for its new host, the honeybee, matchmaker of crops and bringer of honey.
These are two services for which humans are both eternally indebted, and, in the case of the former, possibly unable to live without. As scientists were studying the possible role of pollen in spreading known bee viruses, a team of scientists from the United States and China began screening bees and pollen for viruses of all sorts. Their first clue was the virus’s genome. Still, a leap between kingdoms is not an everyday event. But the news for bees got worse. Fig. 5 from Li et al., 2014. About. Who We Are. CGIAR is the only worldwide partnership addressing agricultural research for development, whose work contributes to the global effort to tackle poverty, hunger and major nutrition imbalances, and environmental degradation. It is carried out by 15 Centers, that are members of the CGIAR Consortium, in close collaboration with hundreds of partners, including national and regional research institutes, civil society organizations, academia, development organizations and the private sector.
The 15 Research Centers generate and disseminate knowledge, technologies, and policies for agricultural development through the CGIAR Research Programs. The CGIAR Fund provides reliable and predictable multi-year funding to enable research planning over the long term, resource allocation based on agreed priorities, and the timely and predictable disbursement of funds. The multi-donor trust fund finances research carried out by the Centers through the CGIAR Research Programs. What we do Making a difference. Starlink corn recall. The StarLink corn recalls occurred in the autumn of 2000, when over 300 food products were found to contain a genetically modified corn that had not been approved for human consumption.[1] It was the first-ever recall of a genetically modified food. The anti-GMO activist coalition Genetically Engineered Food Alert, which detected and first reported the contamination, was critical of the FDA for not doing its job. The recall of Taco Bell-branded taco shells, manufactured by Kraft Foods and sold in supermarkets, was the most publicized of the recalls.
One settlement resulted in $60 million going to Taco Bell franchisees for lost sales due to the damage to the Taco Bell brand. StarLink corn[edit] The Garst Seed Company (part of the Advanta group) was licensed by Aventis to produce and sell StarLink seed in the US.[7]:8 Product recalls[edit] A taco with a hard taco shell Aventis recall/buyback[edit] Aftermath[edit] Later incidents[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] Monsanto Defeats Small Farmers in Critical Bioethics Class Action Suit. Company argues it's not "out to get" America's small population of organic farmers, cites lack of lawsuits Monsanto Comp. (MON) is a firm with a long and controversial history. It is accused of abusing intellectual property rights to sue small farms (allowing its patented crops to blow seeds onto their properties, then suing them); trying to bribe officials in Canada and Indonesia [1][2]; and suing dairy farmers who advertise that their milk doesn't contain growth hormones.
They also were the company responsible for spraying Agent Orange all over soldiers in Vietnam, which is thought to have led to cancer and other ailments. I. In the case the farmers, led by lead plaintiff Bryce Stephens, sought relief against Monsanto in the form a prohibition on Monsanto from bringing suit against organic farmers regarding seed contamination, given the really real possibility of cross-pollination via the wind and animals.
Mr. First, he says that his neighbors grew the transgenic strain. Now Mr. II. Facebook. Bizarre GMO wheat mystery in Oregon. Seeds are usually only guaranteed for one year; after that, the percentage of those that won't germinate tends to climb. Tends to. Scientists have successfully germinated seeds from medieval trash dumps, from plants covered over in the last ice age, and from every other source you'd think were too old. Heck, I overplanted pumpkins this year, thinking that my fairly old seeds would have a high failure rate. Instead, nearly all of the seeds I planted took, and now I can't walk through half my garden without playing Twister. So I'd say that it's not at all improbable that these seeds are fourteen years old, accidentally mixed in, and mostly viable.
Seeds last for thousands of years if they are kept from rotting situations ! Consequences of increased global meat consumption on the global environment -- trade in virtual water, energy & nutrients | Stanford Woods Institute. GM crops don't kill kids; opposing them does - Matt Ridley. Consequences of increased global meat consumption on the global environment -- trade in virtual water, energy & nutrients | Stanford Woods Institute. 3 Insanely Important Crops You've Never Heard Of. Home. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University :: Home. Annual Letter 2012. Swarna Sub1: flood resistant rice variety. Central information website for the global seed industry. Does Mother Nature Always Know What’s Best? | Science. We are way off target if we hope to feed everyone by 2050.
Blasting strawberries with plasma - Foodskey. BBC iPlayer - Discovery: Can Chemistry Save The World?: Fixing the Nitrogen Fix. The Amazingly Disgusting Science of Cheese.